Let the 'Wild Rumpus' Begin!

There's a cute little children's book store in Linden Hills(Minneapolis area) called Wild Rumpus. We LOVE it there.

They have chickens just walking around!

Look at the ceiling!?!

There's a big person door and a child size door. How adorable is that???


My sister Amy catching up on some old favorites... that's a cat napping under the chair. There are cats running around the store also.

Hi Dad!(nice smile!)

Unique decor...

John always sits here and waits for Mary Beth to bring him various books to read to her.

There are also: ferrets, chinchillas, lizards, spiders, fish, birds, and various other animals around the shop. Kids think it's the best store in the world!

cute, cute, cute

Jeffrey's teacher told us about it last year and we were amazed the first time we went. Now we go every time we are in the cities and we tell everyone we know about it. It kinda reminds me of Meg Ryan's shop in You've Got Mail(which I'm obsessed with. because I want a shop like that. and because her hair is great in that movie.)

Hello chicken.

If you have kids and you've never been to Wild Rumpus- please go. You won't be sorry. You'll love it and your kids will LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object be became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover,
and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter,
and the mare's foal and the cow's calf...
-Walt Whitman


I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are.
-A fourth-grader in San Diego

This is from the opening page of Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. I've been wanting to read it for a long time and a friend just lent it to me.
I also just finished Gap Creek- great book! Mom, you should read it, you would like it.

new books!

two of our favorite books arrived in the mail today! the kids are so happy that we finally own them. the Pout-Pout Fish was a book Mary Beth first heard at school and sang a rhyme from it over and over at home when Julia was visiting. so Julia learned it too and they both sang it for days: "i'm a pout pout fish with a pout pout face so i spread the dreary-wearies all over the place. blub blub blub." only Julia(and me and Sarah) was sing germy-wormies instead of dreary-wearies because that's what we all though Mary Beth was saying! turns out she wasn't. the penguin book has great math worked into it and is so funny. Mickey used to take it out of the library all the time- it's one of his all time favs.